Wrapped Around a Spindle
by rufeepeach
Summary: Belle returns to the place where she used to live; Rumpelstiltskin returns to hiding grief in a bottle. Rumbelle. Post-Storybrooke
1. Chapter 1

Title: Wrapped Around a Spindle  
>Rating: PG<br>Genre: Angst  
>Summary: Belle returns to the place where she used to live<p>

When Belle returns, the house isn't the home she remembers.

She clambers over the dust and rubble that was once their front door, and into the great, grand hallway. The shelves are kindling, smoking on the flagstone floors; the sky peeks in through the cracks in the ceiling. The glass from the windows sparkles like diamond shards on the scorched and battered carpet.

The Curse ripped the world apart, and this place was no exception.

She crosses the room, trying not to see the world the way she finally, _finally_ remembers it. For there are the remains of the curtains she tugged one afternoon, and nearly fell to her death.

There are the broken splinters of a table she sat on and drank tea, and talked with the best friend she'd ever had.

The image of this place, this broken ruin of a palace, and the memories of her home are superimposed over each other.

She kneels, uncaring of the damage to her jeans from the other world, the other life, when she sees a familiar shape. The spinning wheel is split cleanly down the middle, the remains thrown to all corners of the room.

The wood isn't torn or shredded, but precisely cut into two separate pieces.

The spindle, still shining in the daylight, is blunted; there is a chip taken out of the top of it.

She picks it up, holds it to her chest, and starts to sob.

A part of her had hoped that this, this alone, would survive. For in this spinning wheel where their memories, hers and his, their shared life wrapped and twined around the spindle, inseparable.

The dust from the floor clung to her jeans. She hadn't taken them off since Storybrooke fell, just hours ago. Other people are changing back into their old attire, remembering who they were.

But not Belle: every part of who she was is in this spindle, and it fits perfectly into her jeans pocket.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Guys, this is the second drabble I've written that my (completely awesome) readers have bullied me into continuing. So here you go: this is now a post-Storybrooke reunion fic, with a massive heaping dose of angst. Because I really am trying to emotionally scar each and everyone of you. Enjoy!

* * *

><p>When Rumpelstiltskin wakes up, his head feels strange.<p>

"Belle?"

No one answers. He files that information away, knows its important, but his mind is too muddled to work it out right now.

He's alone, the sunlight streaming down through trees. He's lying on a pile of leaves, he realises, and everything has a kind of golden glow he hasn't seen in a long, long time.

The Curse is broken, and they're all back home.

"Damn it." He grumbles, as he hauls himself to his feet. He'd done as much as anyone to bring Regina down – Gods knew, the bitch deserved it – but he'd liked his life there. He was going to miss comfy chairs and television. And all his things: Rumpelstiltskin knows enough to know that he's unlikely to see any of his possessions ever again.

He starts walking. Sooner or later, the traveller always reaches someone willing to help him. Life is a fairy tale once more, and certain rules apply.

(_Especially when the traveller is also the most dangerous thing in the woods._)

He's still dazed, his mind reverting to its autopilot mode of practicality, how to get out of this situation alive. Some old skills never die.

He makes a list of things in his mind, the things he'll never see again.

His best suit.

His big, broad armchair.

His four-poster bed, with his favourite quilt.

His teacup, the one with the chip in it.

_His wife_.

He stops short, and shakes his head.

If she's not here, with him, then she's gone forever. If they'd arrived together, she wouldn't have left; if they'd been separated, then one of them must have been killed in the battle. There is a grave, somewhere, with her name on it.

He'd expected one of them to perish: he'd hoped it would be him.

He had created the damned thing, after all, and he hadn't assumed he'd make it. But this forest was a little too familiar to be Heaven, and the ache in his limbs was a little too real.

Belle is gone, and he is in shock.

When the loss hits him, a few hours later when he's fed and watered in a local tavern, it's like a body blow.

He feels his bones tearing apart, the skin too tight to hold in the pain he feels. He's a widower twice over, and his true love is dead again, and every thought he has of her, of their life together, is another stab wound.

So he drinks to forget. He washes away the memories: her smile on Sunday afternoons; the smell of her hair fresh out of the shower, damp and gleaming in the sunlight; the way she looked on their wedding day, eyes wide and bright, filled with more love than he'd seen in the Universe until that day.

He never stops drinking: he's dealt with her death (_badly, and never completely, but enough to get by_) before. He can do it again.

Because Rumpelstiltskin is a coward, and he can run from his grief to the bottom of a bottle faster than anyone.

* * *

><p>Belle never changes back into her dresses.<p>

They're still in the estate, up in her closet, dusty and faded from age, but wearable.

But they're remains of another life, the clothes of another woman, a woman who died years ago. These are the dresses she wore before she was married, when she was a maiden in a monster's home. These are the dresses she wore before the love of her life threw her to the wolves. These are the dresses she wore when she was young, and silly, and in love.

Now she is old, and sensible, and her heart is empty.

When he wasn't there in Snow's palace, when the Curse was broken and everyone was awoken from their slumber, she knew he'd been right.

All magic came with a price, and in the end, he'd had to pay it.

So she locks her old room, with all the gifts and trinkets he'd given her when they were together, with the dresses and shoes and aprons of her youth, and keeps the key in a drawer in her desk.

Emma comes by, a few times, over the next few weeks. She gives Belle all the clothes from the other world she can find, and then leaves her in peace.

Emma's brilliant, and they'd been so close in Storybrooke. But she'd also been her Maid of Honour at her and Rumpel's wedding, and their closest ally when they brought Regina down once and for all. It pains her, but Belle can no longer look at her old friend without remembering what she's lost.

She can't look at anyone. So she locks the door, and begins to clean.

She'd promised to keep and care for this place for the rest of her days. In the end, her love had died to keep this promise, to keep her family and friends alive and happy and safe.

She was damned if she wasn't going to hold up her end.

So she stays in her jeans and t-shirts, and starts the lifetime of work it will take to restore this place to its former glory.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: One day I will make it a whole twenty-four hours without posting/spamming your inboxes. Today is not that day._

* * *

><p>The Dark Castle lives up to its name: cold, quiet, and looming on a hillside through the autumn months. It's Belle's home, and she likes it dark.<p>

She comes to be something of a legend: the woman who helped to save the world.

She is a known friend and ally of King James and Queen Snow, and of their daughter; there are rumours that she once cared for the heir to King Thomas and Queen Ella's throne. She was the wife of the greatest sorcerer the Realms have ever known, and the words 'demon whore' haven't been spoken in decades.

And she's all alone.

Belle no longer craves the world, and it is disinclined to convince her otherwise.

She learns magic, in that castle. When the cleaning that can be done by hand is completed, she sets about learning spells for rebuilding, for summoning, for strength and for flight.

No one hears the explosions she causes in her first months.

There's no one around to frown at her cursing when she singes her fingertips, or to laugh at the state of her hair when it decides to be green for a day.

The people of the town, used for generations to studiously ignoring the Castle and its occupants, start to whisper when, one day, it turns from its usual grey stone to a rather fetching shade of pink. It turns back fairly quickly, but the impression is made.

Belle is now Madame Sorceress, and word travels fast.

Her name, of course, is lost in the process. The Dark Witch's reputation spreads, until even those who knew her in Storybrooke cannot distinguish between appearance and reality.

Belle knows her name, but it seems pointless now.

Of course she isn't the Dark One. Of course her skin is a healthy, if somewhat pale, human pink; of course her hair is clean, and her eyes unremarkable blue. Of course she doesn't follow her husband's example, and trawl the Realms for desperate souls and lost causes, ready to take advantage.

The old tradition died with Rumpelstiltskin, and Belle is happy to keep it that way.

The only place where he still lives is in the Castle. Belle never leaves, never allows the rooms and her mind to become corrupted by the outside world. If she stays here, in these walls, then there's still something to cling to. Then she has no reputation of her own, no abilities or followers. She is Belle, the Beast's wife, the retired heroine, and the glory days need never truly die.

She wanders the halls, sometimes, when she's too restless to read and too distracted to conjure. She imagines the world the way it used to be, before the Curse was broken. She remembers old television programmes, remembers the way she lay on the sofa with her feet in his lap, and listened to him try to explain soccer.

She tells herself stories from magazines, and recites the pawnshop's inventory until she can barely understand the words.

For this world, the world she can create within her mind, this is the world he inhabits. This is the world where he loved her, and they were happy, and she had something good to give, something to share and work for.

But now Snow has married Charming, and Emma is learning to slay dragons, and Ella has three beautiful children. Now the world no longer needs its heroes, and there is no place for an old, heartbroken sorceress with no more battles to fight.

* * *

><p>Rumpelstiltskin keeps his head down.<p>

Everyone thinks he's dead, and far be it for him to correct them. He has images of mobs, torches and fear, and he can't be having with that.

This world is good at ridding itself of its monsters, especially those who helped curse them for near-on thirty-five years, and never even apologised.

No matter he ultimately fought to bring Regina down, and restore the sodding place. No matter that they were all too willing to make deals with him before, and their leaders were at his wedding, and without him they'd still be trapped there.

'Well,' he thinks, in one of his near-lucid moments, 'that's gratitude for you.'

He's come to see that this world no longer needs a Dark One. And since he has no interest in being one, anymore, anonymity and magical restraint seem like the order of the day.

He simply goes by Rum, these days: a decent name for a man never far from a stiff drink. He pickpockets and he steals and it's not a bad life.

It's not what he used to have, but he doesn't let himself think about that.

Thinking about that is what got him started on this path, and it's all that happens when he sobers up. He knows he needs a drink when he sees her face on every brunette waitress, around every corner, at the bottom of every bottle.

He's stagnant, drifting, the last man in existence with no chance of a happy ending.

He wonders, sometimes, in the mornings before the bars open, why he didn't die. He's not suicidal (_he's always been a coward, and death scares him like nothing else_), merely curious. Everyone else got their happy ending the moment they arrived back – as every common herald will share – and those who did not perished in transition.

Regina died the moment the spell broke. There's no happy ending for the wicked.

And yet here he sits, alive and intact (_although he's working on that second one_), without an ending of any kind in sight.

He hears stories of new monsters, although they are small in comparison to what he remembers. The ogres are at peace, and the dragons stay in the mountains most summers, and the Dark One is in a tavern drinking ale by the barrel, so there are few things left to terrify villagers.

But oh, villagers love to be terrified, and they have a new ghost story, now: a woman who lives in a castle, who can summon storms and upend mountains, who wears a wooden dagger at her throat, and who never sees the light of day.

They say she was the lover of an ancient demon. They say she can know and twist a person's fate with just the sound of his name. If someone displeases her, she can turn grown man into a harmless rose, to add to the briars and bushes that surround her home.

He starts to drift in the direction the story comes from, aimless and only half-conscious; the stories become more hysterical and ridiculous with every mile.

He reaches towns within striking distance of the dreaded Castle, and there are old women with stories of missing straw from their farms, and parents using the tales to keep their children home at night. He tries not to laugh when he speaks to one shy barmaid, who lives only ten miles from the Witch, who remembers a day she swore the castle was turned a bright and rosy pink, and screams of rage echoed down through the valley.

Rumpelstiltskin knows that castle: it was his. These stories are half new material, half recycled myth from when he terrorised these lands thirty years ago.

The maid wishes to move: she believes the Witch will come for her soon, and turn her into a rose to add to her collection.

He hears of hunting parties, and isn't sure who he's more concerned for: the poor old woman – taken up residence in his old home for the winter – who is perhaps the source of the complaints, who will be killed for sure at the hands of this mob; or the hunters who may be about to go and anger a powerful witch.

Rumpelstiltskin was never a hero. But marriage (_he winces, even that word hurts_) made him soft, and his wife made him something resembling brave, and he wants to know more.

He thinks he may solve this without bloodshed.

He lost the only person he'd loved for over a hundred years to make this land safe for ignorant villagers, he'll be damned if a witch or a pauper is going to jeopardize that.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: And here it is, the last chapter!

* * *

><p>There's someone on Belle's land.<p>

She can sense it, the little crackle of power as someone crosses the barrier, blasts through the briar walls and onto her property.

She's had visitors before, the odd lost peasant or desperate beggar. To those she grants entrance through the ten-foot rose vines, and grants food and shelter. She never shows her face, of course, but she has a whole mansion to herself and it seems selfish not to.

But she hasn't granted entrance to anyone in months. Whoever this is has made it through on their own, and these were _his_ spells before they were Belle's. These are strong magic, and that means that sorcerer has passed her defenses.

She's only been at this a year, and while a year of constant study and practice – and half a lifetime of exposure – has taught her the basics, she's not attuned enough to tell who it is.

The magic is _dark_, though: it hangs like a dense, forbidding cloud over the estate.

And whoever it is has made it past the wall of briars that she's grown to surround the place, her roses that have twisted into arm-thick vines of thorns. Someone has made it through on their own, without her permission: someone intends to invade.

So she readies herself: she pulls on one of Emma's donated leather jackets and changes her slippers for sturdy boots. Jeans and t-shirts provide a mobility and strength that dresses cannot.

Not to mention how much easier they are to repair and clean.

The intruder is nearing the castle, and Belle begins to gather her power. She holds it in the spindle, which she wears on a chain around her neck. It's the one part of _him_ she has left, the one reminder she allows herself to keep, and it works as a conduit and a talisman.

_He_ never needed anything like that: _he_ was stronger and more powerful than she.

And now someone has come to take her home, _their_ home, from her. Perhaps the Queen never truly perished, and has returned hoping to rule once more. Perhaps some new enemy has arisen (_she'd known this supposed peace was too good to be true_) and decided to make a name for themselves by defeating the Dark Witch and stealing her fortress.

She's nowhere near as powerful as legend would have it, but that's not important.

Even when she was just an ordinary woman, foolish and brave, she had had a power. Even _he_ hadn't messed with her when she was angry, in this world or the other, and with an enemy at the gates and a world of pain and loss and stolen magic at her fingertips, she is ready to do battle. This old, broken sorceress still has her (_his_) spells to keep her warm.

She stands in the centre of their hallway, and doesn't flinch when the door flies open, and a cloaked figure emerges.

* * *

><p>Rumplestiltskin spreads his arms, and the wall of roses and thorns parts before him. It's a simple, physical manifestation of the magical walls he'd put up when he lived here: in fact, it seems to have fed off those same spells.<p>

He'd expected them to fall and crumble after he'd left them alone for so long. Their maintenance isn't a good sign: whoever is inside has some power of their own.

Not a poor old woman then: maybe the legends are true.

_Fuck._

Now he's going to have to do some actual fighting, and Rumplestiltskin has spent most of his long, long life doing all he can to avoid that.

He considers turning back and returning to the village. He can get a beer in the tavern, return to his safe, drunken state, and never think on this again. The idea is immensely appealing, and almost causes him to pause.

_Her_ face, as it always does at the most inopportune moment, flashes through his mind. He sighs through the now-familiar pain in his chest.

This is their home. And while he'd left it to rot and ruin after he learned of _her_ supposed death, after the Queen had visited and fractured his world, this is still their palace. This is still the place where _she_ lived, where _she_ pulled down the curtains to let a hundred years' worth of sunlight come pouring in, where _she_ shook him out of sleep, however briefly.

He'll go inside, tell whoever's decided to move in to clear out, and vanish.

Then he'll strengthen the magical protection field to prevent anyone from entering ever again. These briars will rise a hundred feet, impenetrable, and bury this castle and its beautiful, shining, awful memories with it.

He bursts through the front doors ostentatiously, and shrouds himself in a cloud of smoke. His hood (_peasant fabric, brown and dirty like all his clothes_) is up, hiding his face in shadows, and his cloak billows.

He needs to look powerful, forceful, and terrifying. He needs to be the vengeful and omnipotent Dark One.

There's a woman waiting for him, with short dark hair and clothes he hasn't seen since Storybrooke fell. He recognises the coat as being one of Emma Swan's old jackets, and the boots as well. Someone's filching clothes from the old heroes and selling them on, apparently. There's something mildly offensive about that thought.

"Leave this place!" he thunders, impressively, even as an inner voice cringes. He's not entirely sober, he'll grant that, and while no one else can ever tell when he's intoxicated (_except for her, she always could, and she'd shut him up and put him to bed_), he does tend to get a bit... loud.

The woman doesn't even move. But she does shout, in a voice that's both painfully familiar and entirely strange, "No!"

She's raised her own hands, and a beam of barely-controlled, raw power slams against him. He returns in kind, and the room crackles with the force of their magic as it clashes in the middle. And it feels good, to release this, to let rip just a fraction of the power he still possesses, and throw the force of his grief, his pain and confusion into it.

The woman stumbles, and he stops for a moment as her power seems to fail. He watches her dark, slight figure fall to her knees in the rubble, head bent.

"If you leave now, dearie," he calls, using his old tones as he throws a bit of insane malice into his tone, "Then you'll be spared."

She looks up at him, and there's such anger twisting her face that even across the room, he can see it.

He also thinks he recognizes her, but he's seen that face on every brunette from here to the Outerlands, so it means nothing to him.

"Don't you fucking _dare_!" she screams, and a ripple of magic, stronger than before and heartfelt, agonised, emanates from her and throws him backwards, "Don't come here and _speak_ to me like that! _No one talks like that anymore_!"

She's on her feet as he regains his balance, and storming toward him, lightning crackling and burning from her hands as he throws up a strong shield to defend himself.

She's covered half the distance to him, before the lightning abruptly stops. She almost smiles as she raises her hands, summoning a wind, and he raises his a moment too late: the wind rips his hood from his head, and his hair is whipping across his eyes, and through the smoke and dust he can see her clearly.

And she can see him.

He knows the moment she recognizes him, the moment the wind stops and the magic dies from the air as fast as it came, and they're stood, stock still in the wreckage of their home, staring at each other. Husband and wife, and years and worlds apart.

* * *

><p>She doesn't know what to say.<p>

Rumplestiltskin, in all his green and gold, scaly glory, is standing before her. He's dressed as a pauper, smells like a sewer, and is somehow once more the terrifying, beautiful creature he was when they met. He is the incarnation that matches this place, reduced to the same ruins of smoke and rubble.

"Belle..." her name is whispered so reverently, so disbelievingly, that she can barely believe she's hearing it.

"You _bastard_!" it wasn't what she thought she'd say, if she ever saw him again. Her husband, her best friend and true love, resurrected, and all she can feel is a building, blinding anger.

"Belle?"

She launches herself at him, tackles him to the ground, and even with no magic behind her the weight and momentum throws them both to the ground.

She's crying, she can barely feel or think or see anything for crying, huge wracking sobs that nearly break her bones and she pounds on his chest, fists beating every inch of him she can find. Her hands are little stones, clenched and hard, and they rise and fall without conscious effort.

Because he's here, he's alive, and he never came for her.

Because he didn't call her name, or send a letter, or tell anyone that he was even _alive_.

Because if there had been any chance at all that he'd lived, she would have walked every inch of the world to find him. And yet here he is, dressed as peasant, in _her_ hallway, ordering her to leave.

"Belle, Belle, calm down!" he tries to soothe her, although she can't tell if the water on his face is her tears or his, but it's no use. He has to resort to grabbing her wrists in his hands and holding them still, before she'll finally look into his face, blurred from the moisture in her eyes.

"Calm down?" her voice is controlled, now, but shaky. Every word is a gamble: any moment the sobs could start again, and she doesn't know if she could even survive it, the pain is so great "You're _dead_!"

"No, you're dead." He corrects, and his own voice is hardly its normal self. He sounds as broken as she, and some of the anger starts to drain away.

"You weren't there when I woke up," she shakes her head, "You weren't – where _were_ you?"

"I was in a forest. Somewhere near Snow White's old home, I think; with a banging headache, and no wife."

"You never even _looked_ for me." She stares down at him, and holds nothing in. She watches him wince at the pain on her face, "I was with everyone else, _everyone_, Snow and Emma and Charming... and you weren't there. You were with me, and then you just... _weren't_."

"I thought you must have died."

"Why?" she's crying again, but it isn't quite as painful this time, "What made you think that?"

"I... I don't know. Monsters don't get happy endings, and no ending for me could be happy without you. I assumed your death would be my final punishment."

"You utter and complete _bastard_." She slaps him across the face, hard, and then leans down and kisses him breathless. He still tastes the same: like smoke and grass, and something spicy she's always assumed to be pure magic. Her lips work over his as he releases her wrists to hold her face in his hands, and pull her as close to him as possible.

She holds him as tightly as she can, drowning in him. She's angry, furious, and the grief she's carried for a year of isolation - of silent, mind-numbing _agony_ - can't be removed so simply. But he's here, and _alive_, and kissing her as though he thinks she might vanish at any moment. And she's returning the favor, because here and now there are no certainties at all.

Then she pulls back, and the anger returns, "How many times do I have to tell you? _You are not a monster_!"

Then something else registers: she's right.

Not just in the fact that he isn't evil, that his crimes and the darkness in him doesn't bring him even _close_ to the status Regina had held. But because now, in a much more physical sense, her statement was correct.

He's human. The man she'd married in Storybrooke, although his hair was a little lighter and he was perhaps a little thinner (_she'd always had to remind the stupid man to eat_) is now the one lying beneath her.

Absurdly, she starts to laugh.

"What is it, Belle, what happened?" he's frowning; concerned she's lost her mind. Maybe she has.

"It's like déjà vu all over again!" she can't stop, the whole thing is so funny. She grabs his hand, holds it up to his face so he can see the very human skin tone, "If you get up and scream at me now, I swear I will _end _you."

"Quite right, too." He smiles at her, and it's so genuine, and she's missed it so much, that she starts to cry again, "Did I ever apologise for that?"

"I think so... another time wouldn't hurt, though." She's smiling too, and she leans down to kiss him again.

"Sorry," he says between kisses, as he rolls them over "Sorry, sorry, sorry..."

* * *

><p>They somehow make it up to his old bedroom, and it is hours before either of them is able to speak again.<p>

When night has fallen, and they're both exhausted, he finally pulls the covers up over them. She snuggles into his side, buries herself against him as far as she can, and he rolls them over so she's spooned against him, so they're in contact as much as possible.

"You know, I think it's time for an 'I told you so'. She says, into the darkness.

"Oh, yes? For what, dear?"

"I told you that you weren't a monster. Or the bad guy, the villain, or any of the other nasty things you insist upon calling yourself. If you'd just believed me, we could have found each other much earlier."

"I missed you." There's no more he can say, because she's right. He could have written pages of apologies, and expressions of love, and long-winded explanations of how much he needed her, of how empty everything was when she wasn't around. But sometimes the simple statements are all that are needed.

She cranes her head around, and they kiss. It's difficult, and a little messy, but it still means the world.

"If you ever leave me again, I think I'll probably die." She whispers, and there's such sincerity in it that he can hardly breathe. She settles back into the pillows, and he can see her smile in the darkness, "Maybe I should handcuff you to me, to make sure you don't go anywhere."

"I would have no problem with that," he murmurs into her hair, "Although going to the bathroom would be a little difficult."

"Hmm, I guess," she agrees around a yawn, "Maybe we should just promise to not assume anyone's dead until we've seen the body?"

"That's a pretty decent rule, yes," he nods, and hears her giggle, feels the vibrations through his body. Her laugh has always been the purest, most beautiful sound he'll ever hear, and he adds it to the list of things he's missed.


End file.
